Once a year in August, my French village suddenly becomes Spanish! It’s time for the Festival Flamenco in Gorbio. Don’t think ‘touristy’ flamenco, this is the real thing, real gitane (gypsy) flamenco with dancers and musicians and singers from all parts of Spain and it’s fabulous! Not easy to photograph with the fast movement, low light and also constantly changing coloured lights but every year I get a little better at it and love the challenge. It takes place over three crazy days – we eat paella, we drink sangria, we clap and cheer and during the daytime we meet ..Read more

It only takes a few weeks and suddenly I find I’ve not posted on this blog – then more weeks go by and I justify this to myself by saying, ‘Oh well, everyone sees my photos on Facebook and Instagram.’ I post an image each day on both of those social media platforms at Jilly Bennett Photography. And then, several of you lovely people wrote concerned for me – was I ill? Is everything alright? How kind and how caring. Thankyou! Follow up emails made me realise that not all of you are on Facebook or Instagram, indeed many of ..Read more

Sanremo is one of my favourite places to visit and it’s only 40 kilometres from Menton. Hop a train in Menton – change in Ventimiglia, the first stop in Italy, and from there it’s about 15 minutes. Market day is a good day to go – Saturday or Tuesday, whether it be for the great food on sale – or if you want a bargain. You can even buy Italian viagra in Sanremo market – read on! The market has always had a reputation as a place where you could buy a fake Chanel or fake anything from some ..Read more

(En français à la fin de la page) Hello dear friends, This is fun! Taking photos not through glass but through plastic. Years ago, I photographed a table of diners in a Menton restaurant through the plastic protection of a restaurant terrace and was surprised (pleasantly surprised) at the distortion this gives to the image. Often, the eye doesn’t see it at the time of taking the photo but once home, and on the computer, it can have the feel of an impressionist painting. And it is just one click. It’s important though to focus ‘through’ the plastic and onto ..Read more

It’s not that I particularly like sepia – in fact, give me good ol’ black and white anytime. Or colour. But I belong to a small group of very sympa photographers and friends who get together in Menton and the surrounding villages to recreate the past in images of life as it was once lived. At the moment, we are ‘in the 1920s’ when sepia was still in use. In film photography, it was a chemical process carried out on silver-based photographic prints and had the advantage of being more resistant to the degradation of time. However, during the first ..Read more

About Me

I'm Jilly,

More than anything I love to photograph people. Every face tells a story, a moment captured on a camera tells a story. And that's always my aim - to tell a story, to share a feeling, an emotion. I love to photograph life as I see it around me here in the south of France, where I've lived for over twenty years.

And if there's a dog in the photo, so much the better! I'm currently working on a photography book featuring dogs of France and Italy. Luckily, I speak fluent 'dog' - my favourite language.